On Mar 28, 2005, at 2:23 AM, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
What about an almanac? A news broadcast? An encyclopedia? These are all mere collections of facts. Are you trying to tell me that these cannot be copyrighted?
Copyright law in the US covers creative expression, not facts.
The almanac, news broadcast, and encyclopedia all contain a substantial amount of creativity in the selection and presentation of those facts. That's why they are copyrightable. You are free to lift the facts out of any of those --- the facts themselves are not, and can not be protected under the copyright act. So, you are free to do whatever you like with the sunrise and sunset times in your almanac, or the birth and death dates of Thomas Jefferson in your encyclopedia, or the latest developments in the Schivo case given on the news report.
I think a much similar case to a Fink info file is a telephone book, which can not be copyrighted (see the Supreme Court's decision in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.[0]).
Take a look at the Fink info file of bzip2, for example. This is one I'd argue isn't copyrightable:
Package: bzip2 Version: 1.0.2 Revision: 12 Essential: yes Depends: %N-shlibs (= %v-%r) BuildDepends: fink (>= 0.13.0), fink-prebinding Maintainer: Fink Core Group <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Source: mirror:sourceforge:fink/%n-%v.tar.gz Source-MD5: ee76864958d568677f03db8afad92beb Patch: %n.patch CompileScript: make PREFIX=%p InstallScript: make install PREFIX=%i DocFiles: LICENSE README CHANGES manual*.html SplitOff: << Package: %N-shlibs Replaces: %N (<= 1.0.2-1) Depends: base-files Essential: true Files: lib/libbz2.*.dylib Shlibs: %p/lib/libbz2.1.dylib 1.0.1 %n (>= 1.0.2-2) Description: Shared libraries for bzip2 package DocFiles: LICENSE README CHANGES manual*.html << SplitOff2: << Package: %N-dev Depends: %N-shlibs (= %v-%r) Replaces: %N (<= 1.0.2-1) BuildDependsOnly: true Files: include lib/libbz2.dylib Description: Developer files for bzip2 package DocFiles: LICENSE README CHANGES manual*.html <<
Up through here, we have nothing creative at all: Everything is a fact, presented in a form mandated by Fink (the software) and Fink policy; if you took the raw facts out of this, gave them to a different person, and he created a new info file, he'd wind up with the same thing.
Description: Block-sorting file compressor DescDetail: << bzip2 is a portable, lossless data compressor based on the Burrows-Wheeler transform. It achieves good compression and runs on practically every (32/64-bit) platform in the known universe. << DescPort: << Doesn't use autoconf, but comes with a useful Makefile. Anyway, the patch modifies it to build a shared library instead of a static one. <<
This is the only part that could, I think, even concievably be copyrighted. However, I very much doubt it; it is a list of facts with very little creativity in them. Not only that, its fairly short. If you tried to express the same facts, you'd likely wind up with the same thing.
License: OSI-Approved Homepage: http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/
More facts which are expressed in a form constrained entirly by Fink policy.
The scripts, if of suffient length and creativity might be. (Ones that just invoke install probably aren't. Just another collection of facts.)
The definition of copyright is not based on length nor creativity.
Yes, it is. See above.
[0] http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm
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